Arapuca device for international neutrino experiment is enhanced

A critical part of one of the largest recent particle physics experiments was developed in Brazil. The Arapuca is a light detector to be installed in the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), a project seeking to discover new properties of neutrinos, fundamental particles with very little mass that travel at close to the speed of light.

The X-Arapuca is an enhanced version of the light detector developed by professors Ettore Segreto of the Gleb Wataghin Physics Institute of the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), and Ana Amélia Bergamini Machado, collaborating researcher from the same institution. The device was the subject of the session given on Day One of FAPESP Week London, an event taking place February 11-12, 2019.

Detector - DUNE - Construction - United - States

The detector will be installed in the DUNE, which is expected to begin construction in the United States in 2021. DUNE will be equipped with two huge detectors. The first will be close to the source at the Fermi National Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois. The lab's particle accelerator will produce a powerful neutrino beam. That beam will travel to the second, much larger detector, 1,300 km away, at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, holding 70,000 tons of liquid argon and located 1.5 km underground. The site will also hold 60,000 X-Arapuca detectors that will be responsible for detecting the light emitted by the beam. Each X-Arapuca will measure 10 by eight centimeters.

The entire system is being tested on a smaller scale—the ProtoDUNE—in operation since September 2018 at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) on the border between France and Switzerland.

Development - Arapuca - Efficiency - Principle - Modifications

"This is the most recent development of the Arapuca. It provides even greater efficiency based on the same principle, while introducing minor modifications. We are running the tests at UNICAMP and the detector seems to be very good. In addition to...